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Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 20 (2013)

Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 20

(2013)– [tijdschrift] Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Peter R. Frank, Johannes Frimmel & Murray G. Hall
Book history in Austria

The history of the book in Austria has remained essentially uncharted territory even for scholars from neighbouring Germany. Therefore, this article begins with a brief historical introduction outlining the special conditions which influenced the course of Austrian book history. This is followed by a presentation of the characteristics of book production under the given influences. Finally, reference will be made to important publications and research projects as well as fields of future research.

Austrian book history as a transnational challenge

If one were to compare Austrian book history with the same discipline in its often overpowering neighbour Germany, one would soon become aware of the fundamental differences between the two. Up until 1871, German history was marked by a sort of territorial fragmentation and thus there was a corresponding array of imperial residences and centres of publishing. The population was, for all intents and purposes, German.

On the other hand, the Habsburg Monarchy - administered from a central location - was one of the largest European empires, in which the capital Vienna played a preeminent role. It was a multi-ethnic entity, with, among others, Austrian Germans, Jews, Poles, Ruthenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Croats, Slovenes, Serbs, and Romanians. Some fourteen languages were spoken and written in the realm. A Europe in a nutshell.

Vienna, where books were produced in almost all languages of the Habsburg Monarchy, demonstrates this as a focal point. Though censorship was very rigid, a good deal of Viennese literature consisted of translations and of books in foreign languages. Thus Austrian publishing houses contributed substantially to cultural transfer. The book trade in Vienna served as a type of hub for literary transfer within the Habsburg Monarchy. Writing the history of books of the Habsburg Monarchy always means asking how print made it possible ‘to communicate with one another within a complex system determined by multi-ethnicity and multi-culturality’.1 It is this aspect of the

book history of the Habsburg Monarchy that seems of particular interest for the development of new perspectives in book historiography. It becomes more and more evident that the history of the book can only be written as a transnational history. Print culture did not only determine the way nations were defining themselves, it was also crucial for cultural transmission.

Book production in Austria

Following the humble beginnings of book production during the age of Humanism (with printers and publishers such as Alantsee, Winterburger, Singriener), the Austrian book trade was hampered in its development well on into the eighteenth century by the effects of the massive Counter Reformation. State regimentation in the form of exclusive printing rights or Privilegien and censorship dominated and inhibited the book trade. Printed books were mostly commissioned by local or court patrons. The at times oppressive censorship under the Catholic Habsburgs repeatedly impeded and interrupted the development of strictly literary publishing companies in Austria. The brief impetus given to literature and the book trade under Emperor Joseph ii (1780-1790) was cut short again during the repressive era that was to follow, and it was only during the liberal phase that there were greater freedoms.

The major strength - and this pertains especially to the publishing landscape in the nineteenth century - was the publication of scholarly works and other non-fiction. Relatively early in the century, new publishing firms began to specialise, for example, in the fields of art and music (Artaria, Gerlach etc.), theatre literature (Wallishausser, L. Rosner), legal texts (Manz, Braumüller, Gerold etc.), medicine (Perles, Urban & Schwarzenberg etc.), cartography (Ed. Hölzel, Freytag & Berndt) and agriculture (Wilhelm Frick). Other notable publishers included Beck, A. Hartleben, Hölder, Deuticke, Pichler and Tempsky. Many of these firms produced a rich collection of works from the natural sciences, philosophy (Brentano, Bolzano), psychoanalysis (Freud, Adler) as well as texts dealing with history or economics (e.g. Alfred Arneth, Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Richard Mises) and functional literature.

Another characteristic which made the Austrian publishing landscape different from the German one was the multitude of languages. In addition to the German immigrants, the French, the Dutch, the Italians, the Greek and the Czechs all came to leave their mark on the Austrian book trade. Texts in Latin and German were produced alongside those in Hebrew, Greek and in oriental tongues and, obviously, in all the languages of the Monarchy. The multi-ethnic aspect of the Austrian book trade is also mirrored in the history of its professionalisation. Indeed, it was a Polish bookseller from Lviv (Lemberg) by the name of Milikowski who called for the union of all booksellers in the Monarchy as early as 1846. Then, in the year 1859, the Verein der österreichischen Buchhändler (Association of Austrian book sellers) was established. It was an organisation modelled on the German Börsenverein and drew its members from all corners of Habsburg empire. The official Austrian trade publication, the Österreichische

(later: Österreichisch-Ungarische) Buchhändler-Correspondenz began to appear the following year.2

In 1840, Austria, which was by no means among the avant-garde in calling for better protection of intellectual property, signed the first international literary convention with Sardinia, thus paving the way for the long-awaited Imperial Patent of 1846 offering extended copyright protection.3 Despite repeated initiatives over the years on the part of the Austrian book trade, the parliament of the dual monarchy failed to pass legislation which would have anticipated Austria becoming a member of the Berne Convention. Resistance came - among other places - from the aspiring peoples of the vast Monarchy who did not want to pay royalties for translations in their efforts to catch up with other cultures. Copyright legislation was instead regulated by individual reciprocal agreements. Because Austria did not become a party to the Berne Convention, the works of Austrian writers and composers enjoyed less copyright protection at home and this led many of them to publish in Germany. In the words of one contemporary, Austrian writers were ‘free game’ for pirate publishers. It is not surprising then that this situation hampered the development of a strictly literary publishing industry in Austria-Hungary. It was not until 1920 that the young Republic of Austria was forced under the terms of the peace treaty of St. Germain to join the Berne Convention.4

At the beginning of the First Republic in 1918, when many successful publishing companies had lost their traditional markets in the vast Monarchy (legal texts, school books and the like) and were forced to re-invent themselves, there was a short-lived boom which led to the foundation of countless new literary publishing houses. Many of them, including ambitious share-holding companies such as wila or the Rikola Verlag, had gone under by the middle of the decade. However, others, such as Herbert Reichner, Paul Zsolnay or E.P. Tal, which had a foot on the German market, stayed in business until the annexation of Austria by Hitler Germany in March 1938. Of these three firms, only the Paul Zsolnay Verlag, which was subsequently ‘aryanised’ during the Nazi period survived until after the Second World War. Its successful programme was based on international bestsellers and contemporary German-language literature.5

The status of the discipline

In contrast to the situation past and present in Germany, Book History has never established itself as a field of study at Austrian institutions of higher learning. There is no ‘historical commission’ similar to the one established by the Börsenverein in Germany. Research on the book and publishing trade has generally been restricted to the private initiative of individual scholars. There are however a number of outstanding examples of Austrian scholarship from the nineteenth century worth noting. One is the comprehensive, two-volume history of book-printing in Vienna by Anton Mayer, Wiens Buchdrucker-Geschichte 1482-1882, as well as numerous important articles and brochures penned by Carl Junker.6 Roughly a hundred years later, Anton Durstmüller published a three-volume history of the printing trade in Austria under the title 500 Jahre Druck in Österreich.7 In the year 2000, N. Bachleitner, F.M. Eybl, and E. Fischer published a single volume history of the book trade in Austria, which, naturally, restricts its scope to the German-Austrian region.8 It is worth mentioning that Austria brought forth a number of prominent librarians, bibliographers and book historians, among them Josef Körner, Wilhelm Kosch, Hanns Bohatta, Gustav Gugitz, Max von Portheim, Gert A. Zischka and Karl F. Stock.

Despite various initiatives, the complicated historical situation of the Habsburg Empire as a multi-ethnic and multi-national state was instrumental in the fact that Austria did not have a national bibliography until 1946. This makes Austria one of the few European states lacking a retrospective bibliography. During the days of the Monarchy, national bibliographies of Polish (Estreicher) and Hungarian literature (Petrik) appeared, but all attempts at compiling a joint Austrian national bibliography came to naught. The project of compiling an Austrian retrospective bibliography Österreichische retrospektive Bibliographie (orbi), which was begun at the Austrian National Library and is restricted to publications within the territory of present-day Austria, only comprises two series, edited by Helmut W. Lang, namely Series 2 (newspapers) and 3 (periodicals). A continuation of the project appears unlikely. The National Library also publishes the journal Biblos. Beiträge zu Buch, Bibliothek und Schrift as well as the series Biblos Schriften. Based on the donation of the library of Peter R. Frank, the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (Vienna City Library) has been endeavouring in recent years to establish a special Book History collection. It is hoped that the recent acquisition by the Austrian National Library of the archive of the Verein der österreichischen Buch-, Kunst- und Musikalienhändler (Association of Austrian Booksellers) will provide further impulses for research.

In order to create a common forum for book historians in Austria, Peter R. Frank and Murray G. Hall founded the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich in 1998. The main goal of the association is to initiate and promote book history research projects and to

encourage links with international research. Publications include the series Buchforschung. Beiträge zum Buchwesen in Österreich and the semi-annual journal Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich. The association also regards itself as a platform for research into the history of the book throughout the entire Habsburg Monarchy up until 1918. In other words, this covers not only the German-Austrian region, but also the Slavic, Hungarian, Romanian, etc. book trade and book production. The association's website features, among other things, a current list of all relevant theses pertaining to book history in Austria.9 Its concept of book historical research is based on the communication cycle as developed by Herbert G. Göpfert and Robert Darnton. Robert Darnton defined book history in an article first published in 1982 as ‘the social and cultural history of communication by print’,10 whereas Göpfert declared the communication cycle ‘vom Autor zum Leser’ as the field of book history.11 The interests of the association encompass the entire spectrum of the book trade: from the author to the reader, institutions involved in the production and dissemination of books - paper, binding, printing, retail book sellers, publishers, libraries, censorship etc. - and the printed works - books, newspapers, journals, sheet music, maps, posters, lithographs and so on.

With the exception of the many publications of journalist and historian Carl Junker (1864-1928), there was no real interest in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Austria in the history of the book trade - neither on the part of scholars, nor on the part of the trade association. Little changed in the decades after the Second World War. Publishing history was mostly restricted to the history of newspapers or publishers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was not until the mid-1980s that the focus of research finally turned to publishing history in Austria in the first half of the twentieth century. The publication in 1985 of a two-volume history of literary publishing in the inter-war years by Murray G. Hall proved a turning point.12 It deals with topics such as National Socialism in Austria, the looting of books and the ‘aryanisation’ of Jewish property, this belated interest has to be seen in the context of the country's reluctance to deal with its Nazi past. This history gave rise to a large number of scholarly works at Austrian universities dealing with company histories and the book trade in general, a considerable number of which are available as free downloads at the website of the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus.

Spurred on by the Art Restitution Law, passed in late 1998, the focus of research has also turned to library history especially during the Nazi period in Austria (1938-1945) and to provenance research. One of the first major publications in this field was a comprehensive history of the National Library in Vienna during the years 1938-1945.13 This

work also spawned provenance research projects at a variety of university, provincial and communal libraries throughout Austria (Vienna, Klagenfurt, Salzburg, Linz, Graz and Innsbruck).



illustratie
Figure 1. Cover of P.R. Frank, J. Frimmel, Buchwesen in Wien 1750-1850. Wiesbaden 2008


This increased focus on what is essentially the history of the book has brought forth numerous publications.14 Under the stewardship of Peter R. Frank, the Gesellschaft für Buchforschung in Österreich initiated the project Topographie des Buchmarktes in der Habsburgermonarchie 1750-1850. Within the framework of the project, the aim is to offer, for the first time, an overview of the book trade in the entire Habsburg Monarchy. The project documents the individual firms, their owners and, in the case of larger companies, offers an overview of their production. The entries also include information on the history of each company, addresses and biographical details. A list of sources and archival material, catalogues and bibliographies as well as secondary literature serves to encourage further research. The compiled material is kept in a database and is also being published for selected regions in book form. The first volume,

Peter R. Frank and Johannes Frimmel's Buchwesen in Wien, 1750-1850 was published in 2008 and other volumes are planned for Prague and Bohemia as well as Pressburg/Buda-Pest.15 As the first volume has demonstrated, this research opens up a fascinating perspective for the future by presenting the book history of the various lands of the Habsburg Monarchy in context. Whereas scholars, and book historians are no exception, have hitherto tended to focus on the history of nations, there is now increasing interest in examining the multi-ethnic realm as a common communication area. Furthermore, a history of the book in the Habsburg Monarchy could provide important impulses for a history of the European book trade. A joint repertory of relevant archival material, coordination of digitization projects and the retrospective bibliographical compilation of book production would be the necessary prerequisites.



illustratie
Figure 2. Cover of S. Alker [et al.] (eds), Bibliotheken in der NS-Zeit. Göttingen 2008


Current trends and future perspectives

What would be desirable in the field of Austrian book research is a more vigorous methodological discussion, which should address the social and cultural ramifications of book printing in the larger context of media history. Book production figures for Austria up until 1918 are completely inadequate and at times misleading because they only list German-language book production and ignore the substantial amount of books printed in Slavic languages or in Hungarian. Among the projects which would be of major importance are a compilation of the data from the various retrospective national bibliographies (such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and a resumption of the Austrian Retrospective Bibliography orbi. Without the corresponding bibliographical data, definitive conclusions about the development of the Austrian book production and any comparisons with the German book market will rest on insecure foundations.

More attention should be paid to linking bibliographical work to publishing and social history, as is common among scholars in English-speaking countries and France. Included among the issues to be addressed is the connection between the materiality of the book as an object and differing reading practices. An analysis of the massive piracy production in the Habsburg Monarchy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for example may prove highly enlightening for interactions with print in a transnational context. The practice of reprints should be studied in more detail under the aspect of how the reception of books and book design were connected. Paratexts, abridgements, adaptations, illustrations, format and typography could inform us about reading practices. Another aspect is the connection between printing and emerging national identities on the basis of the ethnic groups within the Habsburg Monarchy, whose book production experienced a renaissance from the eighteenth century onwards. Another issue to be addressed is the relationship between oral, hand-written and printed communication. From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, Vienna was an expanding multiethnic capital in which different social groups communicated by a variety of media within different communication spheres. Its inhabitants found themselves in a complex and polyphonic cultural situation of overlapping and rivalling spheres of communication.

Various impulses for new methodological aspects are to be found, for example, in a recent publication edited by Samo Kobenter and Peter Plener under the title Seitenweise. Was das Buch ist.16 The topics dealt with in this collection of essays include the history of types and printing as factors influencing reading, the relationship between print and body as well as reading from a phenomenological perspective, the uses of books as well as library and bibliophile classification systems.


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